Catherine Austin Fitts will be happy!
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Retail stores are putting discount coupons on their website, then require the scanning of your phone or entering your phone number on their terminal during checkout if the customer wants the discount on the purchased items. Anonymity using cash is no longer available unless one pays the full price or doesn’t buy discounted items. Recently at a Safeway grocery store many of the items purchased had two prices, regular and a discounted one. Since I wasn’t in their data base I was charged full price. When I went to customer service they required a phone number to create a “membership” then issued a cash refund for the difference in prices, cheerily announcing it was good at all their stores plus their recently megamerged chains.
Seems the checkout process is gradually trending to monitoring and controlling what the customer buys no matter what form of payment.
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I ask for a membership card at the checkout counter, and then just never register it…still seems to work. At least at my store. I don’t get the super deal coupons, but the discount still works.
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Nowadays when you buy some items; they want you remove your driver’s license, and hand it to them. Some places; they have hidden electronic devices - to try and then capture data, from your other cards.
Welcome, to the 20th-Worst Century!
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As a Norwegian who has been a member of “Ja til kontanter” ( “Yes to cash” -literal translation) since the first year I do agree that Norwegians have some fears for a cashless society.
Actually Norway are extreme when it comes to union work, strikes and that sort of things.
I asked a lot of people to join “Ja til kontanter” early on and the only thing that held some back was that it was founded by members of the political parties “FrP” and “Høyre”, known as the right wing party and the capitalists lovechild. “Høyre” means “Right” as in right wing, so it its always been the opposition to the labor party here , which has ruled for the most, at least earlier times.
It was interesting to see the leftists denounce the initiative because it came from the right. Instead of celebrating that the right did something they agreed with.
Sounds like a familoiar political climate anyone? Americans maybe? 
Anyways, Norewgians have trust in government that is insane. But at the same time we say when enough is enough.
The EU wing felt pretty sure in 1994 we would say yes after turning it down in 1972, but yet again Norwegians said no.
And again there was this interesting conflict, cause it was the leftists who said no and the right wing who tried to use the leftists arguments; we have to stand in solidarity with Europe, we can do this together, the climate change issue demands unity and on and on, while the leftists sounded like right wingers with “sovereignty is important, we cant trust others to have our interest at heart” and similar lingo.
So we don’t use cash much, but if the scary foreigners are threatening to take away cash completely it’s like some reflexes kicks in and our xenophobia and scepticism comes back in full effect. We want the freedom of choice to be there at least.( or keep the illusion of having a freedom of choice is more right to say I guess)
That was todays history lesson from me, have a great night
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Thanks for the history lesson. Looks like the whole wide world is steeped in the same brew.
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Sometimes the cashier has a generic card or their card they can scan.
That’s what I asked her at checkout. She said they no longer use cards so she didn’t have a way to add the discounts. She seemed a bit out of it (daft in my book) and said the items purchased were not on sale anyway. But referred me to Customer Service which luckily was right behind me and not busy. The discounts are given by either showing your phone as being registered at their website or entering your phone number at the checkout terminal.
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I noticed everyone wants the phone # when purchasing retail… I wonder what they are doing with all the information… selling it?, using it to track you in the store?